The CW Orders Script for Summer Camp Comedy 'Acting Out'

CW President Mark Pedowitz is reworking a musical summer camp comedy as a half hour vehicle for the femme-skewing network.

The CW's newly installed president Mark Pedowitz is making good on his promise to invest in comedies.

The femme-skewing network chief has ordered a script for Acting Out, a half-hour musical summer camp comedy from Todd Graff (Bandslam). The CBS TV Studios project, which also counts Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas (Bandslam, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, Maid in Mahatten) as an executive producer, is being redeveloped from its previous iteration as an hour-long project last development season.

Pedowitz expressed his desire to reverse course on his predecessor Dawn Ostroff's strategic decision to abandon the comedy genre. “We are opening ourselves up to looking at comedies this year,” Pedowitz told reporters during his TCA panel last Thursday, claiming several of the coming season’s offerings –CBS’ Two Broke Girls, ABC’s Apt 23 and Fox’s New Girl-- would have worked well on the CW.

He reiterated that desire to get a foothold in the genre in a scrum following the session, explaining that he’ll do so slowly and selectively. The goal, as the business-minded executive sees it, is to have more repeatable fare on a schedule now dependent on serialized drama.

"Being owned by CBS and Warner Brothers, they're two of the best studios for comedies around so we have a good shot of actually finding something that works," Pedowitz added. Asked whether he planned to have a comedy block in place by next fall, he shrugged, “If it happens, great.”